What game holds graphical supremacy?

[frances_farmer]

Hl2 use to achieve realism..
1)very high quality Textures ,and Pixel shaders (for water and Fire ) and some fancy HDR effects.. because everthing in the lighting departments is mostly workaround or tricks here and there.

Doom3 use..
1)Advance lighting techniques to produce Dinamic Lighting in real time/ REal time Bumpmaps / Normal maps/Real time specular maps/Diffuse maps../realtime shadows. and as a bonus very detailed characters/weapons

err you missed:

specular maps
bump maps
normal maps
diffuse maps

for Half-Life 2. oh half-life 2 also has water refraction ^_^

 

[Caminante]

ok Guys.. let me give you now my ideas about this..
First.. "best" is subjective.. and a thing about personal opinion..
FOr some people Quake3 looks "better" and for others Unreal Tournament..
its the same thing here.. when discussing about Halflife2 vs Doom3 graphics..
"which one looks better" it just a matter of tastes ... Britney spears or Cameron DIaz.. i like more the first one ,but other may like more the last one.

however ,still it is possible to say wich game looks more closer to the real life. both are far for realism ,but more closer than never, each one use a diferent aproach to make you believe you are looking at "realism".

Hl2 use to achieve realism..
1)very high quality Textures ,and Pixel shaders (for water and Fire ) and some fancy HDR effects.. because everthing in the lighting departments is mostly workaround or tricks here and there.

Doom3 use..
1)Advance lighting techniques to produce Dinamic Lighting in real time/ REal time Bumpmaps / Normal maps/Real time specular maps/Diffuse maps../realtime shadows. and as a bonus very detailed characters/weapons

all that is good to do something like this..
http://www.doomworld.com/php/screenie.php?dir=/pcgamer_dec2002/

which one looks better to you is a matter of taste. for some one game may look plastic and for others the other game may look like Toons ,wich game follow a more closer aproach to the real thing is a diferent story... and here i will like to quote someone ..

quote:
"Lighting is critical to making people think a game is real."
Andy Thompson, director of advanced technology marketing for ATI Technologies...

and he was right! this is not an opinion ,this is a well know Fact, if you work in the 3dindustry as a game developer/artist or just for fun . and i will go further than that. Lighting is the MOST! important ingredient to achieve realism. not one of the most ,but the MOST! ..no more ,no less.. take your digitalcamera and fire and shot in a dark room with very poor ligthing and even if it is a picture of the *real life *,it may not look realistic.
Lighting makes All the diference.. and here is where Doom3 follow a -more closer aproach to realism - another step ,than any other game. with its unified realtime per-pixel lighting.

the future is per-pixel lighting engines.. or any other NEW thing where Lighting is first class citizen. you can do much more and more easily that any other engine that can't do that.. ask any game developer .. and they will tell you that this is simple the truth. Valve in the other hand their engine is mainly based on Lightmaps as their primary lighting technique. something that have been said carmack *invented* some years ago in quake1.

http://www.3dengines.net/feat/?f=4&page=8

however there have been many upgrades from static to dynamic lightmaps ,and more resolutions ,but still is something that idsofware dropped completly from their next game.even it is "baked" or "Raytraced" ,and other game developers will follow/,and thats including Valve ,just notice that from all those NExt generation games..
HL2/Doom3/Hl2/Farcry and Stalker only the first one doesnt support perpixel lighting.

realism can be achieved with ..
1)high quality lighting that interact with everything..
2)High resolution textures ..
3)high polygons counts and or good quality bummapping
4)specialeffects Ps2,0 .. "HDR"..Fire/water..

the number #1 is Critical , without lights ,colors doesnt exist. the best quality is the lighting and the more natural it behave ,the best quality will be your graphics. the less natural the light behave ,the less realism you will see in your graphics.

the biggest challenge to Valve to achieve more realism in Hl2 is an engine limitation,exactly their lack of a realtime unified per pixel engine -in their engine that can interact on the fly in real time-with everything.
the real way light behaves.. light interact with everything ,not just with pre-selected things.why because effects like Bumpmaps/Normalmaps/speculars.. need real time perpixel lighting to look natural and correct.. that why Hl2 E3 demos almost doesnt use Bumpmaps ,because in that game it only works at special situations.->with static shadow maps. that why most walls in Hl2 are too smooth (flat) , same with speculars with are static.."painted" there are no accurate reflections in Hl2 ,in Doom3 there is not a single surface and single character that is not with extra detail (bumpmapped). no single surface or character than doesnt cast a realtime specular light ,no other game do that. at all times.. very few like Stalker and FArcry do it sometimes. but at all times is the way it should be if you want to be closer to realism.

just look at your keyboard and notice the beautifull specular of the light shining at ..maybe at one corner.. if you move your keyboard to a diferent angle or a diferent part of the room the specular will be in another place.. not at the same place.. right? that is what happens in most games that use Lightmaps.

the biggest challenge to Idsoftware to achieve realism in -> Doom3 [an indoors game] is mainly a hardware limitation ,your computer power .but this is something that will not be an issue in the future since every six months we will have more powerfull Cpus and video cards. to handle more detailed custom models and very high resolution textures wich Doom3 also support. BTW. it just means that Mod makers will be able to push more by a great margin the graphics in Doom3 than mod makers in Hl2. out of the box. but things are not that easy because its is well know that Hl2 support PS2.0.. (allow more fancy speciall efects ,,water..fire) and Doom3 engine not..? and also Valve developers upgrades their engine frequently ,so in the future you can be sure to see more cool stuff in that game.

quote:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For centuries, artists have tried to capture the effects of light to present an image just as the eye sees it; Monet meticulously painted every spot of sunlight on the London's Parliament building at different times of the day. Today's game developers struggle with the same thing. "It's about creating a suspension of disbelief, and the thing that lets you do that is lighting," says Andy Thompson, director of advanced technology marketing for ATI Technologies, the Ontario-based company that manufactures Radeon graphics cards. "Lighting is critical to making people think a game is real."

To induce that level of fear, Carmack knew he had to eliminate what he refers to as "the Hanna-Barbera effect." In Road Runner cartoons, he says, you can always tell which boulder is going to fall, because it's a slightly different hue than the static background. The light doesn't look right. Until now, lighting effects in games were dictated by graphics cards in a limiting way. Games couldn't render general-purpose dynamic shadows, Carmack says, so they used light maps, static dark patches essentially painted on a surface.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
read the full article here..

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.05/doom.html?pg=1&topic=&topic_set=

the "hanna barbera effect" is the Barbie face ,of characters or the painted look (like Toons) of everything.

every game have its shortcomming ,, its unfortunate that Doom3 doesnt have PS2.0 so will not have nice looking water or fire.. maybe there is no water in mars and that Hal life2 doesnt have perpixel lighting like Doom3..
maybe its because its not possible to have it all..

Owesome reply and very detailed indeed, i most say. However, whether Doom3's engine will be able to render nice water and fire effects has yet to be seen - which i'm most certain, it definably will- in more detail. There seems to be fire on some of the media but, but it can't be clearly appreciated to jump to conclusions . In this board lurks SOME of the most narrowest minded, stuborn, fanatic and other wise dumb people ever.

 

[PvtRyan]

Vann7, you're right that lighting IS very important (I don't agree with that it's the MOST important thing though) but Doom 3 lighting is everything but realistic. Granted, it uses very nice techniques to render all shadows realtime and stuff. But this is not the way real light works. Real light doesn't hit the surface and disappears, it bounces around and spreads color around the room. Or so called color bleeding. HL2 uses this indirect illumination to render the lightmaps. IMHO these look much more realistic, ALTOUGH they are not realtime rendered. Doom 3 has shadows that are too sharp and too dark.

It doesn't look realistic, it just uses a fancy way of calculating shadows, which fits the gameplay of Doom perfectly, but just wouldn't work in HL2. That kind of lighting is a waste of resources in games like HL2. I do feel lightmaps look better, IF used in the right wat. Of course, the main drawback is that they aren't dynamic, but that is fine in the case of HL2 gameplay.

 

[Wolf]

'In this board lurks SOME of the most narrowest minded, stuborn, fanatic and other wise dumb people ever.'

Plenty of fanboys on both sides.

Personally, I've yet to meet a single passionate D3 advocate who understands the difference between art assets, aesthetics, fisual videdility and technical engine specs when it comes to speaking about 'graphics'...

I follow tech as much as the next person and understand it very well, but I don't confuse my appreciation of a game's graphics with specs - and argue merely by trying to overwhelm the other people with as many technical buzzwords as I can...

For myself, I will say this - until I see a completely unified renderer that doesn't sacrifice poly budgets, soft shadows, texture resolution, AI resources, outdoor and n-creature on screen capabilities, and hardware scalability then I will be happy with a more balanced approach.... You fanboys speak about D3's lighting as if it can do subsurface scattering and cook dinner for you - blah blah... We all know unified lighting is the way of the future but at the moment the trade-offs for what you get are not necessarily worth it depending on the kind of game experience you're trying to create (the primary example being Deus Ex Invisible War)...

FYI - If I had a choice between HL2 having unified lighting OR less developed facial animation tech, AI and smaller environment - then I'd choose the facial animation, AI and wide spaces every single time. You might want to consider why that's the case...

 

[Caminante]

'In this board lurks SOME of the most narrowest minded, stuborn, fanatic and other wise dumb people ever.'

Plenty of fanboys on both sides.

Personally, I've yet to meet a single passionate D3 advocate who understands the difference between art assets, aesthetics, fisual videdility and technical engine specs when it comes to speaking about 'graphics'...

I follow tech as much as the next person and understand it very well, but I don't confuse my appreciation of a game's graphics with specs - and argue merely by trying to overwhelm the other people with as many technical buzzwords as I can...

For myself, I will say this - until I see a completely unified renderer that doesn't sacrifice poly budgets, soft shadows, texture resolution, AI resources, outdoor and n-creature on screen capabilities, and hardware scalability then I will be happy with a more balanced approach.... You fanboys speak about D3's lighting as if it can do subsurface scattering and cook dinner for you - blah blah... We all know unified lighting is the way of the future but at the moment the trade-offs for what you get are not necessarily worth it depending on the kind of game experience you're trying to create (the primary example being Deus Ex Invisible War)...

FYI - If I had a choice between HL2 having unified lighting OR less developed facial animation tech, AI and smaller environment - then I'd choose the facial animation, AI and wide spaces every single time. You might want to consider why that's the case...

Actually, i'm no fanboy of either game, as a matter of fact, i've stated several times already that, i will buy both games regarless. The game's graphics as whole aren't all that. As for Deus Ex2 running like a dog on most systems - if that what you ment- it's mainly due to bad coding, not actual hardware limiation.

And if we are going to talk about Doom3's -which i'm no fan- shadowing and lightning rendering not being or feel realistic, why not talk then about why games developers can't implement more high-textures graphics, odors and physical pain to emulate real life a bit more accurate? To me, D3's lighting and shadowing effects look outstanding.

I get quite sick everytime i hear about HL2's "face expretions or facial animation" feature. Say.... do you plan in looking at all the characters faces animations the whole game, or perhaps ask the enemy to let you look at their faces for a minute before you kill them or something? That feature will only be useful on the cut-scenes not throughout the whole game, you are just another fanboy in the bunch.

 

[Kadayi]

I get quite sick everytime i hear about HL2's "face expretions or facial animation" feature. Say.... do you plan in looking at all the characters faces animations the whole game, or perhaps ask the enemy to let you look at their faces for a minute before you kill them or something? That feature will only be useful on the cut-scenes not throughout the whole game, you are just another fanboy in the bunch.

The facial animation/lip synching aspect of HL² introduces far more opportunities for mod/game development from a storyline viewpoint than any amount of fancy lighting protocols ever will.

 

[Wolf]

ROFL he's either VERY unimaginative or hasn't ever enjoyed a game that has even a smidgen more NPC depth than your typical blast-em up / hack and slash game -ie. none.

He should seriously go and read the three Gamespot Troika developer diaries for Bloodlines and see what an actual RPG developer appreciates about such a 'useless' feature...

The funniest thing is he completely fails to see the irony of calling facial animation gimmicky and superficial while singing about unified lighting....

 

[Caminante]

The facial animation/lip synching aspect of HL² introduces far more opportunities for mod/game development from a storyline viewpoint than any amount of fancy lighting protocols ever will.

What does that exactly has to do with who has the best graphics? I can't really see how that is going to make game graphicaly better...?

 

[ferd]

The prettiest gfx? Stalker, because they are really realistic, and not exagerated like in D3. Why not D3 of Far Cry? Because the movinf footage of Far Cry just doesn't look right, some flashy sky's and water...but cartoonie models, and fluo green trees. Same with D3, nice light effects all the rest looks cartoony to me, and absolutely not realistic, D3 wont make me feel scared.
Then there is HL2, a lot of ppl seem to forget, that there is no PC of GFX card yet that can run HL2 at its fullest. And even when that happens and the hardware is up to it (lets say the next winter) Valve still has this high resolution texture pack...(remember?) wich will give HL2 another graphical boost, assuring that it will remain a graphically highstanding game for lets say 2 years atleast imo.
Also the gfx in HL2 feel much more natural, and absolutely not cartoony. Some screens make me feel scared (some BINK movies really did scare me) because the game is alive. And not some kind of plastic hi-tec toy we get stuffed with every year. But looking only at gfx (meaning screens and movies) then Stalker looks the best imo.

 

[Arno]

FYI - If I had a choice between HL2 having unified lighting OR less developed facial animation tech, AI and smaller environment - then I'd choose the facial animation, AI and wide spaces every single time. You might want to consider why that's the case...

Well, duh. That's because HL2 aims for large, open environments. The Source engine was made with that in mind. The Doom3 engine is designed for high-detail, claustrophobic environments. Trying to make HL2 on the Doom3 engine is just as dumb as trying to make a Doom3-game on the source engine. Each game engine has different strengths and weaknesses. The unified lighting system would indeed add little to HL2, but in a survival horror game such as Doom3 it makes a world of difference.

 

[Kadayi]

What does that exactly has to do with who has the best graphics? I can't really see how that is going to make game graphicaly better...?

LOL, lets see:-

The facial animation/lip synching aspect of HL² introduces far more opportunities for mod/game development from a storyline viewpoint than any amount of fancy lighting protocols ever will.

If I'm a mod, which game engine am I going to pick to promote my mod on? D³ with it's fancy per pixel lighting, or HL² with it's immersive gameplay feature set?
I voted for D³ in the poll, because from a purely graphical perspective it is technically a more advanced renderer, but that is a rather narrow criteria to gauge an engine by.

 

[Hudson]

Doom III

carmack is my home boy

 

[Baal]

HL2 because it's the only one I've actually played

But you couldn't go wrong picking any of them as far as I'm concerned...all though I haven't seen anything on Far Cry.

The water is what impresses me about HL2.

 

[DiSTuRbEd]

HL2 because it's the only one I've actually played

BAN HIM!*#%$%$

 

[Wolf]

'Well, duh. That's because HL2 aims for large, open environments. The Source engine was made with that in mind. The Doom3 engine is designed for high-detail, claustrophobic environments. Trying to make HL2 on the Doom3 engine is just as dumb as trying to make a Doom3-game on the source engine. Each game engine has different strengths and weaknesses. The unified lighting system would indeed add little to HL2, but in a survival horror game such as Doom3 it makes a world of difference.'

I agree completely. In fact if you read my posts above as well that was my whole point. Engine / game design is about trade-offs and I happen to think Source is great at what it does and trying to add unified lighting would eat into its feature-set.

The moment we get properly unified lighting with a Source-like feature set and nothing sacrificed ie - resources sucked away from lots of high polys creatures and vast environments, high res textures, AI, soft shadows etc etc then you can sign me up as an official card carrying member of 'lightmaps are dead'... (Stalker has a chance at this, though we'll have to see about their NPC models and animation)

Until such time then I'm happy to let the technophiles jump up and down about the best shadowing renderer technology until they're blue in the face.

 

[PvtRyan]

Actually, i'm no fanboy of either game, as a matter of fact, i've stated several times already that, i will buy both games regarless. The game's graphics as whole aren't all that. As for Deus Ex2 running like a dog on most systems - if that what you ment- it's mainly due to bad coding, not actual hardware limiation.

DX2 was badly coded, yes, but also hardware limitations play a role. And this means Doom 3 will only run with pretty stuff on a Geforce 4+

And if we are going to talk about Doom3's -which i'm no fan- shadowing and lightning rendering not being or feel realistic, why not talk then about why games developers can't implement more high-textures graphics, odors and physical pain to emulate real life a bit more accurate? To me, D3's lighting and shadowing effects look outstanding.

I haven't said it isn't advanced, it's just not realistic. In real life, shadows aren't that sharp or have such a high contrast with the enviroment. This is something you can't get around yet with current hardware. But since Doom 3 has a fully dynamic lighting system, you see these unrealistic shadows everyhwere. Which gives it a fake look. Lightmaps have the advantage that they don't have to be rendered realtime and thus you can bake much better looking effects in them, which is performance wise impossible with a dynamic lighting system. BUT, the drawback of lightmaps is that they are static and don't react to changing lights.

I get quite sick everytime i hear about HL2's "face expretions or facial animation" feature. Say.... do you plan in looking at all the characters faces animations the whole game, or perhaps ask the enemy to let you look at their faces for a minute before you kill them or something? That feature will only be useful on the cut-scenes not throughout the whole game, you are just another fanboy in the bunch.

So you're fine with movie actors with a paper bag on their heads, since facial expressions don't matter? Facial expressions are gonna be a big part of the game, because interaction with NPC's plays a large role, they don't just serve as cannon fodder. But also as friends and allies, and decent facial expressions are a thing you can't afford to miss then. Even in combat, the expressions of the allies NPC's fighting by your side will be an important detail, it'll make a difference, you'll see.

Hmmmmm......

 

[vann7]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
quote Caminante:
"By the way, the reason why shadows appear to be too dark and hard on Doom3 is because, even in real life - just in case you haven't noticed it- when, a very bright light source iluminates a very dark room -such as the ones in D3- it usually makes to appear too dark the places which the light can't reach."
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Indeed.. in real life.. shadows are Both.. Soft and Hardedge.. it depends of the intensity of the lighting ,the enviroment where the light is ,and the distance where the object is from the light..
just look at the shadows of your hand at your table ,the more closer is to the surface the more hardedge ,the more closer is to the light the more softer is.. if you do the test in completely dark room with a very powerfull flashligh .you will see some of the Doom3 hardedge shadows in action..
in a very dark enviroment ,with a very intense but small area light ,lighting ,shadows are Hardedge ,just like Doom3. SHadows in Doom3 are good enough for the dark enviroment of that game. for outside .. is a difernet story ,since everything there is mostly soft.

other points discussed here are very interesting..

1)Hl2 Lipsinc technology..
no doubt that technology is revolutionary in game and i expect to see many games using it..
but in my opinion , i think is too much for nothing ,that should be the last thing to be added in a game ,when there is nothing more to add ,since the Technology ,affect very slightly (if any) the graphics or the gameplay. since you dont see the lips of others in a deathmatch or a single play game ,because you are just doing that->playing ,that can be more useful for CUt scenes or intros..
that you usually skip with the mouse button.. nobody wants to listen long discourses ,they just want to play . whenever there is a close shot of the mouth of the character.. but in gaming most people would not notice it.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
quote by Frances Farmer:
"err you missed:

specular maps
bump maps
normal maps
diffuse maps

for Half-Life 2. oh half-life 2 also has water refraction ^_^
"
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

nope ,Hl2 Speculars/normal maps?/Bummaps/ are all static! they use pre-rendered stuff ,baked lightmaps to do that. all those features needs a real time lighting to look natural or realistic.. speculars and *Bumpmaps are -dynamic- in real life.
*btw.. Bumpmaps doesnt exist in real life.. but they are the best feature to simulate irregular surfaces geometry ,at very few performance cost ,the only thing that goes closer to that is DIsplacement mapping ,and it have been said that only PS3.0 in incomming hardware will be able to simulate properly that. same with HDR effects.. wich even valve have told that today DIrectx9 cards simulation is still not good enough. that they are waiting for PS3.0 hardware to fix that.

and yes.. Doom3 will have water and fire effects ,but i think (from a Mod community point of view) it will be limited to Ps1.3 and Ps1,4. nothing diferent that we have already seen in Quake3 or Call of duty.. i hope to see and update to Doom3 here ,since Ps2.0 allows more advanced cool effects. and it is true that Doom3 lights also cant be called realistic ,since the real light bounces in every surfaces ,and difracts colors everywhere ,but still the game has the closer aproach to realism ,than any other game ,is not a revolution in Computer graphics ,not in the Proffesional market ,or movies.. but in games it is.

and no game in the near or long future support -REfractions-.. you need a raytracing engine to do that. and there is no way to do something like that in realtime in a game, video cards are not there yet. what you see in Hl2 water is just a static texture projected in the dynamic water ,(enviroment mapping) ,or maybe is the other way.. a dynamic texture in a static water cant remember well ,need to see again E3 videos ..is the same thing that have been used in many years in games.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
quote:Ferd..
Valve still has this high resolution texture pack...(remember?) wich will give HL2 another graphical boost, assuring that it will remain a graphically highstanding game for lets say 2 years atleast imo.
quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

indeed.. a BIG PLUS! for the mod community , but it will be good to know that the same texture pack can be used in Doom3 , since the game also support -ultra- high quality textures too , remember that the game engine was made to last at least 5 more years, longer than quake3.. quake3 have 3years and still is being used in latest games like Call of duty .

but the Biggest advantage of Hl2 ,is that was made by developers that give great support to the MOd Community. not that Idsoftware doesnt do it too ,they also support the Mod community. its that Valve goes to another LEvel here , never heard before of Mods in a game (day of defeat)developing at the same time that the retail game . means that i expect to see many cool stuff in that game from the Mod coomunity ,with greater quality than the original game..

and finally Outdoors should be another advantage of Hl2 ,since Doom3 Outdoors will be limited by its greater features ,realtime lighting ,since the performance will not be there with this generation of video cards for maps as bigger as the ones we have seen in the Coast of Hl2.. anyone remember the benchmarks of Doom3 that were done most likely in small indoors maps .

a side note.. im very curious what Mod makers will be able to do Vehicles in Doom3 since Idsoftware added the code ,as a gift ,to be used in the game .


from a Mod making point of view .. the only limitation i see in StalKer is their very Cartoonish look of their Characters and weapons.. , also their animations.. if you are a character modeler , your paradise ,will be Doom3 since that game allows VERY HIGH Polycounts Models and weapons.. what you have seen in Doom3 is only the tip of the iceberg of what you will be able to do.

summarizing .. Hl2/Doom3/Stalker/FArcry all those games will have great stuff ,features and great graphics here and there. i expect to see very High quality stuff in the Mod Community.. it just depend of what you want to do.. for the mod community Probably for Indoors and very detailed HighPoly characters/weapons Doom3 will be the best suited game for your needs ,for Outdoors it may be Hl2 ,Farcry or Stalker. its just about what you want to do and see in a game.

 

[vann7]

Btw.. for the people interested here is another thread about this topic..
with diferent opinions about this..

http://boards.ign.com/Half-Life/b5220/50711441/p2

 

[Yakuza]

I think a sleeper called Far Cry is going to end up on top. They have some really cool sounding ideas that will make the game look awesome and run terrific. And doom does look really cool almost photo-realistic. Its too bad that they took out coop. I remember my brothers and I saving up for our own computers and making an cable to link us together.

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/openpic.php?name=..%2Fscreenshots_library%2Fdir_232%2Fvortal_pic_116405.jpg

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/openpic.php?name=..%2Fscreenshots_library%2Fdir_232%2Fvortal_pic_116405.jpg

 

[Kadayi]

The lip synch and facial expression technology shouldn't be underestimated, it opens up a lot of opportunities for creating character driven storylines beyond those normally found under the umbrella of FPS. Certainly lipsynch and facial expressions are fairly pointless in deathmatch, but deathmatch is not the be all and end of the gaming experience, there is a lot more to gaming than simply shooting everything.

If I was a adventure game writer, I'd be really excited about the possibilities of the source engine to act as the skeleton to my next project, to power the delivery and performance of my game characters and environments. Consider DX:IW, graphically you might say that it looks ok, but you could hardly say the characters are realistic, they look wooden and they act wooden through out. It isn't difficult to imagine how much better that gaming experience could of been if it was run through source.

It will probably be some time yet, but I'm looking forward to the first source powered game or mod that isn't a shooter, but is instead a detective story or some such. I just think that would be the funkiest thing to see happening with the HL² engine.

 

[vann7]

hehe.. i was thinking about Lipsinch in Fps games.. since the only times you see lips in character is in cutscenes or long speechs , the E3 demo of the Girl speaking is not surprisinly done in something that can be called a cut scene but you are right to not underestimate the technology in games ,since it have many possibilities for other types of games.. like RPgs and others..

it just that Halflife2 is a Fps game,and developers should observe carefully what features to add in a game. according to valve they have spend 2 1/2 years? in the lipsich tech :dozey: ,i would like more of that time to be used in something more visible in an action game.. something like more graphics ,more special efects or gameplay. how about delivering the game on time? Christmast 2003? they can later patch the game with all the addons they wish. heck but that just me... hehe Games cant be perfect in everything ,all of them need always to do tradeoff here and there.

 

[Kon]

it just that Halflife2 is a Fps game,and developers should observe carefully what features to add in a game. according to valve they have spend 2 1/2 years? in the lipsich tech :dozey: ,i would like more of that time to be used in something more visible in an action game.. something like more graphics ,more special efects or gameplay. how about delivering the game on time? Christmast 2003? they can later patch the game with all the addons they wish. heck but that just me... hehe Games cant be perfect in everything ,all of them need always to do tradeoff here and there.

Valve was working off what the players liked in HL1, people seemed to enjoy the interaction with the npcs a lot, and so valve jumped on this and improved this section allowing the characters a vast assortment of emotions and other stuff.. I am quite eager to see all this in the game when it comes out..

 

[MultiVaC]

What is all this about static normal maps? ALL normal maps are dynamic, the way polygons react to light is baked into a shader, producing the effect we see ingame. The engine calculates how to shade the normals, obviously. Static normal map is an oxymoron; it would just be a texture.

 

[Sparta]

Doom 3 looks cartoony, whilst the lighting looks awesome, same with monster bump maps. But the only thing Doom 3 has on Half-Life 2 is the dynamic lighting, big whoop. Whilst that is pretty damn cool (It was cool in Deus Ex 2) everything else in Doom 3 looks cartoony and plastic. I saw screenshots of a multiplayer map on Gamespot, and the lighting looked absolutely insane, but the walls were covered in some crappy plasticy-metal texture. Now come on, if you watch the Source Bink video, Half Life 2 totally canes anything Doom 3 has to offer. With the water refraction, tiles on the roof, and the slime and veins on Ant Lion Guard, you gotta admit, that Half-Life 2 just looks ALOT more realistic then Doom 3. Besides Doom 3 only really has 1 enviroment, Lots corridors and lotsa metal walls and grating. Woohoo.

Stalker looks pretty good with some of the enviroments, that beats Half-Life 2 in that department, but everything else in Stalker just looks average. As for Pacific Assault, i dont see anything special, big whoop about the guys pupil-dilating, but its not like im gonna notice his pupil-dilate when im shooting at him. Everything else just looks dodgy, water looks like chrome, i'm sure they'll fix that.

Far Cry's water looks really good, but everything else just looks average. On another note though, it sounds like a Tropical Serious Sam

Half Life 2 wins in every department but the lighting, ESPECIALLY realism (exempting the corny B-grade horror movie storyline of course)

 

[GRIMEY]

Funniest thread yet.

 

[Wolf]

Sparta I disagree with you about D3. It is going to have a lot more than just space station environments because the player is definitely going to hell, and half of the game will be seeing visible signs of hell coming to the space station...

 

[Yakuza]

Sparta I disagree with you about D3. It is going to have a lot more than just space station environments because the player is definitely going to hell, and half of the game will be seeing visible signs of hell coming to the space station...

Hell hmmmmm.....I wonder if they will go with Dante's version.

 

[Sparta]

Going to Hell in Doom 3 would make that 2 enviroments, and possibly the Mars surface at one point, so thats 3 enviroments. But come on, from what we've seen from Half Life 2 chances are its going to have ALOT more enviroments then Doom 3

 

[Styloid]

There are some things vann7 is saying that I just can't get.
HL2 does have dynamic, per-pixel lights, just not to the extreme of Doom3. There are many instances in the E3 videos that you can see light fall onto characters/object correctly (aside from the 'popping' into light). HL2 also has normal/specular maps on characters and objects (such as the Antlionguard in the HDR vid) becaue... they said so in the normal mapping videos (they did however, only say 'some'). The g-man talking vid also showed some self-shadowing and per-pixel lighthing.
Then there are the answers from Valve that say they have dynamic lighting. There is also the recent email saying that 'technically' you could make all the surfaces in the world respond to dynamic lighting but that it would be hard on the computer (the question was about a moving sun). I think right now a lot of this needs proof but it seems that all engines are about equal in power, it's only that, due to system limitations, there must be compromises.
The main reason I'm not completely happy with Doom3 graphics is more artistic than technical. I don't like that their shadows simply fade to gray and then black, I don't like the lack of tone in their colours, I don't like the overuse of normal maps and how they don't 'fade' with distance, I don't like how plastic/cartoony the skin looks on the doomguy and the trites, I don't like how 'dull' some textures look while other's look overly complex, I don't like the lack of imagination....

 

[Flyingdebris]

(Offtopic) Hold on a second... okay i don't feel like scrolling around to find the quote, but someone mentioned not being able to see an opponents's facial expresions in deathmatch....

Well shit, would that not be a kick ass thing to include? Have a small motion capture device sitting on your desk thats monitoring the placemant of some adhesive position transmitters on your face and having an ingame voice program too to sync up with it.

you could see and hear your opponent yell "holy shit" with a look of surprise on his face when you round a corner with a bigger gun.

you can actually see if you pissed someone off!

i guess its something for the future

Okay back on topic

Okay i think its time to quit beating the cow to death, its obvious that most of this is a matter of taste. Though I think we can safely agree that Doom 3 has the most advanced (not necessarily best looking) renderer. HL2 looks very very good and has many features. Stalker has great environments and innovative gameplay elements, and Farcry seems to have a very capable engine despite the fact most gamers are put off by its vacation-esque brightness

 

[Arno]

Going to Hell in Doom 3 would make that 2 enviroments, and possibly the Mars surface at one point, so thats 3 enviroments. But come on, from what we've seen from Half Life 2 chances are its going to have ALOT more enviroments then Doom 3

Huh? All of the HL2 screenshots and videos show City17. Most likely there are also non-urban environments and even alien environments in HL2, but so far we haven't seen anything of it.

Oh, and Doom3 also has the ruined, lost civilization underneath the surface of Mars as a 4th environment.

 

[Kadayi]

Okay i think its time to quit beating the cow to death, its obvious that most of this is a matter of taste. Though I think we can safely agree that Doom 3 has the most advanced (not necessarily best looking) renderer. HL2 looks very very good and has many features. Stalker has great environments and innovative gameplay elements, and Farcry seems to have a very capable engine despite the fact most gamers are put off by its vacation-esque brightness

Pretty much summarizes my thoughts also on the issue.

Huh? All of the HL2 screenshots and videos show City17. Most likely there are also non-urban environments and even alien environments in HL2, but so far we haven't seen anything of it.

The buggy stuff in the video doesn't take place in the city, it takes place by the sea. It also demonstrates that the Source engine is capable of rendering large scale terrains admirably.

 

[SnowBall]

I think Visually Half-Life 2 and Stalker take the cookie. DOOM3 next, expecially winning the realtime lighting, and lastly farcry. It might be pretty, but it just doesnt compair.

 

[jonnyapps]

hl2 got my vote after seeing the dynamic range video. doom3 uses its graphics to create an eerie atmosphere but hl2 uses its graphics to accomplish a more dynamic range of effects. for instance, the gloss on eli's eyes, the way they communicate with the viewer. animation creates a sense of realism sofar unseen elsewhere and the use of physics creates a visually wholesome image.
if i can stand on top of a building, see the sun glint off of the roof and stare miles into the distance i feel a sense of immersion. Sure Doom3 has tension but it's hardly comparable. if we tie physics to graphics in that we can 'see' them in action then again, the world becomes more realistic and the player can feel part of his surroundings. Hl2 is the only game that truly approaches this. Agree?

 

[63]

nah, your all wrong, the game that holds graphical supremacy is Goldeneye for the N64. Just look at the explosions when you shoot a desk! It made me breathless the 1, 2, 4, and 8th time I saw it!

 

[csmighty1]

I conquer six three, but I believe that Doom for the Game Boy Advanced holds the cream filled pie of death. I mean who can resist the graphical immersion of that sexy looking rocket launcher?

 

[Zoorado]

hl2 got my vote after seeing the dynamic range video. doom3 uses its graphics to create an eerie atmosphere but hl2 uses its graphics to accomplish a more dynamic range of effects. for instance, the gloss on eli's eyes, the way they communicate with the viewer. animation creates a sense of realism sofar unseen elsewhere and the use of physics creates a visually wholesome image.
if i can stand on top of a building, see the sun glint off of the roof and stare miles into the distance i feel a sense of immersion. Sure Doom3 has tension but it's hardly comparable. if we tie physics to graphics in that we can 'see' them in action then again, the world becomes more realistic and the player can feel part of his surroundings. Hl2 is the only game that truly approaches this. Agree?

AFAIK, DOOM 3 ties physics and sounds to graphics closer than any other game.I don't think you'll see dynamic, per-pixel accurate specular highlights and shadows on every moveable objects in HL2's gameworld.

 

[Sparta]

Doom 3 just uses physics to make the game look cooler, like Max Payne 2. Im sure there will be some parts where you'll have to interact with physics to solve a puzzle, but Half Life 2 definately looks like its going to beat Doom 3 in the physics department. In the sound department, I dunno i havent read anything about either of them. And chances are you'll see specular highlighting on just about every surface in Half Life 2 as well as Doom 3. If you watch the Klieners Lab video you can see specular lighting all over the place, even on Alyx's shoulder where the duct tape is.

 

[63]

I conquer six three, but I believe that Doom for the Game Boy Advanced holds the cream filled pie of death. I mean who can resist the graphical immersion of that sexy looking rocket launcher?

Conquer? As in "I Conquer your ass, all your base are belong to us" or "I Concur" as in "I agree"?

 

[Enigma]

Looks like HL2 is ageing and it did not even come out